Senator Daylin Leach's Bag Tax
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State Senator Daylin Leach is proposing in SB 590 that major retailers and supermarkets (those with annual sales in excess of a million dollars) pay a point-of-sale tax of two cents per bag. Reusable bags would not be taxed. Now I like plastic bags. You can use them to throw out all sorts of stuff (like diapers) but they do involve a certain environmental cost. They are made out of petroleum, they don't break down in the enivornment for a super long time and they make a pretty good source of litter. Given the costs they make mother nature pay, I am willing to pay the extra two bits for the times I want the bags and will use my snazzy Trader Joes reusable bags more often. Of course, not everyone is for the idea, like the Center for Consumer Freedom, which makes ridiculous claims about lead in reusable bags. (Strangely, the site does say much about Walmart.) Usually, an organization with Freedom in the title is a conservative front for something against the very thing which it is supposed to be for. Sure enough, the center is just a shill for various corporate lobbies. |
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A & P and Superfresh and Pathmark are in bankruptcy and ACME is teetering and Sen. Leach piles on one more expense and a lot more record keeping.
Chicken, great to see you reading this stuff. I guess you can't stay away 
Gee Bob, I thought you were for the forgotten taxpayer. So the expense of cleaning up for bags should be passed on to us? I didn't know how forgotten I was.
Chicken, great to see you reading this stuff. I guess you can't stay away.
yeah. i really should try to stay away.
but it does irritate me that you just throw stuff up praising leach without really adding any analysis. its what we have come to call 'p.r. flakblasts'.
so, yup, i read it, and maybe thats because i dont want my silence to be seen as putting up with it without a fight (or, rather, 'without a fight, up with which i will not be putting' - whichever grammatical style you prefer).
Like any Democrat, you think someone else should clean up your mess and pay for taking out your trash.
Democratic Economics tells us that if businesses pay, customers don't. Real World Economics tells us that there is no free lunch.
At Trader Joe's, management encourages you to bring your own bag.
So we have a lobbyist group trying to receive regulatory capture for business from the government, and we have State Sen. Daylin Leach trying to harm struggling businesses with more taxes.
Why not get government out of the picture on both sides of the coin, save $1.5 billion a year the PA General Assembly already spends on corporate welfare with our tax dollars, and let the free market operate on an even playing field where nobody has a competitive advantage or disadvantage so there is more competition, lower prices, more job creation and a better economy?
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Brotherhood of Thieves ~ As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.
Leave the government out of it? Radical idea, politeia, and a good one. Well said.
Those bags have no social utility whatsoever. Rather than taxing them, outlaw them.
It has worked like a dream in the places that have done that. Bag litter disappears almost overnight. It just takes a tiny change in shopping habits to accommodate.
greeeeeeeaaaat. another daylin leach p.r. statement.